Something Most Deadly Read online

  Elliot, Jane decided, had definitely crossed high-priced talent off the list after purchasing Lars Wallenberg virtually as he stepped off a plane from Europe, and out from under the noses of other big stables. Elliot had immediately herded the man into a waiting limo stocked with champagne and an impressive contract. Having an internationally known O-level judge and coach at Springhill was a huge feather in Elliot’s cap, hitting other stables in the back of the knees—and they were gnashing their teeth and waiting for the day Lars would jump ship. Mercifully before Springhill was awash in silver bowls and long blue ribbons. Lars was not just another fancy coach with an accent and gleaming boots, and having access to a great coach and wonderful friend like Lars was one of the perks of Springhill, and made anything else she had to endure worthwhile.

  Jane cleared her mind of Elliot and his machinations as she rolled her car down into to the stableyard like a landing plane, blinking at the white clapboards of the gigantic, carpenter-gothic building with its massive roof. Intersecting wings of the structure were covered in about ten layers of syrupy white paint, making it glow like a giant doily, even in the lavender of late afternoon. It lay nestled at the feet of pastures that fanned uphill in all directions. The barn’s huge, steeply pitched roof was dotted with spired cupolas and cast-iron flag finials that waved permanently, without a breeze, reminding Jane of a circus tent. One very large room sprouted out of the top of the roof in the center of the four wings; a round, many-windowed observation tower. Above that was an antique clock, chiming the hour and half hour. Or at least it would when Reggie O’Malley got it back in working condition. The clock’s enormous, century-old hands had read eleven o’clock for a month.

  Canopies of giant oaks snuggled against most the wings of the barn, although the recently constructed east wing and indoor arena could only boast three big trees. A tree-service would occasionally chainsaw limbs away from the gutters, but the branches still grew back to jealously clutch at the huge building and clog the high gutters and downspouts with leaves. Elliot was constantly threatening to have them all cut down, but the blissful shade they threw in summer weakened his resolve. Not to mention the fee for removal.

  Jane ignored the fancy and formal front entrance of the barn at the front of the north wing, with its columned portico, double black doors, manicured boxwood and oceans of rhododendrons. Instead she stayed on the paved drive to the right; a drive that ambled in somewhat of a circle around all four wings. Six exercise paddocks were terraced into the rolling hills on the opposite side of the drive. Looking at the dirt lanes up there reminded her that she should go search for the license plate that was lost when Dylan pulled her car out of the mud with a farm tractor.

  She continued on the main drive passing the end of the west wing, and then parked along the side of the oldest south wing. This was the only stretch of old barn that was mostly free from trees, leaving space for parking cars and trailers. The one big oak tree it did have, on the very end, was probably the largest tree on the property and its spreading branches kept most of the tin cars and trailers from baking like pies in the sun. Vehicles that did not meet the front lot’s high standards were parked here; Elliot Whitbeck did not allow his pristine main entrance blighted by rusting hunks of tin.

  An enormous white rooster suddenly ran in front of Jane’s car as she prepared to park. She swerved and braked hard to miss the obnoxious bird.

  “Good God, what are you up to now, Mean Chicken?” She used the name children around the barn had dubbed the rooster, because of his irritable temperament and tendency to chase anything timid. Mean Chicken looked like he was late for an appointment and hardly flinched when he nearly collided with her car. Jane shook her head at the near miss as she parked in a slot next to all the horse trailers and the stable boy’s junky cars. She grabbed her bags, jumped out, and walked past a steep dip in the driveway going down under the south wing—a parking “cave” for farm machinery. She watched the white rooster disappearing down the slope into the black maw of the cellar in a goofy trot. The bird then vanished into a pool of darkness under the barn.

  Jane knew from the way his feathered chest puffed out that he was stalking someone again and wondered who was the object of his attention. She guessed it was probably Dylan, parking one of the tractors, and sniffed in amusement; Dylan was far from timid and Mean Chicken was probably going to get a swift boot in the rear end.

  She entered one of the small doors on side of the west wing and stepped into a cathedral-like cool and dark, typical of such a huge barn. Most of the horses had been fed and it was fairly quiet, except for monotonous munching of hay and grain. She had to guess it was somewhere around five-o’clock, since the barn’s clock tower had yet to be repaired, the Buick's clock quit decades ago, and she had forgotten her watch.

  She headed for the circular iron staircase just off the central hallway; a steep spiral climb that left most people over thirty in a heart-pounding, breathless state by the time they reached the second floor—a dizzying height overhead. Jane grabbed the metal railing to launch herself into the ascent and was halted on the first step by a piercing wolf-whistle. She jumped, but was quickly relieved when she saw that the whistler was Sam Noone, the estate’s farm and stable manager. He was standing in the doorway of his west-wing office, hands resting on hips of a former-jockey physique.

  Sam was stockier than in his racing days but still just as short. He had white-blond hair that clashed with caramel skin. Every year the over-tanned skin chased straight, thinning hair further back on his forehead. His eyes were so green that people often accused him of wearing colored lenses, but the only vanity he was actually guilty of was trying to be taller—something he accomplished with a variety of hand-tooled, high-heeled cowboy boots. He was wearing a green short-sleeve shirt that made his eyes radiate even greener, and his usual Levis accented with a silver and turquoise belt buckle.

  “Hey! Fer God’s sake you have legs!” Sam joked, his jewel eyes twinkling from their pockets of crinkly laugh-lines.

  “Yah, who knew?” she responded, backing off the step. “I put on a skirt and there they were.”

  “Have a fun day in the city?”

  “Oh...just...peachy.”

  Sam eyed her speculatively as he approached—a frown raking lines over sun-bleached eyebrows. He casually slid fingers into the pockets of his jeans.

  “Tell me...why’d you jump out of your skin when I whistled? Owen making you spooky again?”

  Jane shook her head, still clutching the iron railing. Trying to hide the truth from Sam was useless, and she sighed: “Owen’s relentless, he just won’t believe I’d rather poke sharp sticks in my eyes than date him.”

  Sam glanced cautiously around the empty barn. “If I was Owen’s employer I wouldn’t put up with him—even if he does win a lot of tin statues and blue ribbons. His lousy temper freaks out horses and scares students. Not to mention badgering you half to death.”

  “Please don’t say anything Sam. If I get him fired he’ll really have it in for me. Let him get fired some other way.”

  Sam studied her doubtfully for a moment, and they were both quiet. Then he said, “If that’s the way you want it.”

  “For now.”

  “Okay.” He sighed and raked collar-length hair behind his ears. He left it slightly long so the bright cornsilk hair could stop sunlight from frying the back of his neck. “Better hurry up and change—Lucinda’s Trakehner just pulled in from New York. The Whitbecks will be down any minute to watch him turned out in the indoor ring.”

  “I know—I saw the truck and I passed Cecily on the way in. She says the horse is gorgeous!” Jane started back up the staircase.

  “She’s right!” Sam answered as he headed back to his office, trying not to be too obvious staring at the unfamiliar sight of Jane’s legs, and repressing envy of anyone with limbs longer than a yardstick.

  “I’ll be down in a few minutes!”

  Jane sprinted the steep staircase in her wobbly heel
s to the barn’s spacious second-floor central hallway. Much of this area was filled by a wooden staircase climbing against the outside walls to the round observation tower. On top of that tower, perched like a tiered cake, was the clock tower. There was also on the second-floor, tucked in a corner, an old unused office from the barn’s former life as a harness racing stable—still appointed with desks, chairs and file cabinets, but now only doing business with spiders and cobwebs. Sam liked to call it the “Bookie Office”.

  The west wing and observation tower were added fifty years after the main south wing was built in 1860. On the second floor of the west wing there were five other apartments besides her own, all with partially sloped ceilings and dormer windows. There was a smaller attic space over the apartments, supplied with vents and fans to let out heat and keep the apartments from turning into ovens in the summer. Presently she was the second floor’s only occupant; the other apartments would house working students when they arrived the first of July.

  The second floor of the south wing of the barn was a huge open-to-the-rafters storage loft for hay the estate grew in outlying fields. It had one small door off the center hallway, with a short stairway down to the loft’s lowered floor. It was off limits to most people and carried a NO TRESPASSING sign. This was to keep a wandering person from falling down through triangular holes cut above the hay rack of each south wing stall—a handy way to get hay down, but a menace to the unsuspecting, and Elliot’s insurance company demanded the sign be posted.

  The north wing was added twenty-five years later. The second floors of the north wing and more modern east wing, were used as holding areas for old furniture, an assortment of antique buggies and sleighs, racing sulkies and two old rowing sculls from Harvard. The upper floors of all the wings of the barn were a connected maze of rooms, dusty attics, stairs, haylofts, observation towers and storage areas, all existing in the nosebleed level over the main barn.

  Jane rushed into her tiny one-room apartment that was barely larger than the 14 x 12 foot box-stalls the horses called home. The apartment consisted of a bedroom-slash-living room, kitchenette and bathroom. She had a small twin bed, and an old couch with a fold-out bed for guests (in case she ever had one) that was a hand-me-down that she received when her Great Aunt Edith died, and a chrome and plastic kitchen table set that she’d picked up from a roadside flea market. A few scatter rugs on the wide pine floorboards, a bureau, odd chairs, and an ever-increasing assortment of teddy bears completed the apartment’s décor. She opened a low door to a small storage closet in the knee-wall between her two dormer windows, kicked off her sandals into it, and then placed the bag of new shoes inside to get them out of the way until she decided whether or not to keep them. Although, not keeping them would involve another hair-raising trip to Boston, probably not worth the effort. She stripped out of her city clothes, washed up and slipped into breeches and a shirt and started winding her long hair into a manageable braid.

  Jane looked out a dormer window as she plaited her hair and spotted Dylan on a rider-mower far below, going back and forth in neat squares, mowing a little patch next to a paddock. Elliot had recently announced he would pay professional landscapers for the front entrance only, and everyone on the estate had expanded duties due to his cost-cutting measures—measures that never impinged on the Whitbeck’s flamboyant lifestyle. So besides being head stableboy, Dylan now had to add landscaping to his list of chores. Jane chuckled as she saw the white rooster running after him in the wake of the mower. Dylan turned the machine in a tight circle and chased the bird off the grass in a fluttering snow of feathers. She left the window, still laughing, and walked toward her riding boots standing by the door, stopping short to stare at a new phone book as it sat on a little rickety table.

  “No!” she cautioned herself. Her stocking feet were rooted to rough pine floorboards. She sat on the bed and thought about it until rationalization set in. “I really ought to know where he lives—so I can be sure to avoid him...” She jumped up, snatched the book and plopped back on her twin bed with it, opening it to the C’s.

  “Campbell...Campion...Canaday.” Her finger traced the long list of Canadays: “Barbara...Brett...Brian! Brian Canaday, 1257 Kilsythe Terrace! So now he moves to Brockton, now when I want to forget about him!” she yelled to slanted walls that were covered with wallpaper of faded cabbage roses so old it looked like parchment.

  Jane leaped to her feet, slamming the phonebook shut, rolling and twisting it until the cardboard covers squeaked. She flung the book back on the bed and then ran to pull on her boots, hopping around as she yanked them on, muttering and banging an elbow. She rushed out the door and onto the circular staircase, boot heels clanging on metal wedges as she spiraled towards the ground-floor far below. She stopped about halfway down and peered out through the curved iron rails at the intersecting hallway. It was empty as far down the wings as she could see, and Sam’s office across the corridor looked quiet and empty. There were open stair treads running up the outside wall of his office, leading to yet another storage area over that room, and over all the rooms and stalls in the north and west wings, but everything appeared to be vacant.

  She was now standing at the same level as the dropped floor of the hayloft over the south wing, but it also looked deserted. No signs of activity.

  Coast is clear.

  She sneaked quietly down the rest of the stairs and approached the office. Sam’s windowed door was ajar and Jane peeked into the large knotty pine room. Rays of setting sun sliced through wooden blinds and cast a striated radiance over mongrel furniture. Tall metal filing cabinets to the right of the door were harshly naked in the horizontal light, revealing rust, stains and fingerprints. A plank side-board on the wall far to her left held a carton of half and half, a softly percolating Mr. Coffee appliance, and a small square refrigerator.

  Across the room, between windows, Sam’s shabby oak desk glowed where it was kissed by sunlight. Beside the desk was an old wooden captain’s chair. A dilapidated love seat, a beat-up rocker and a giant, overstuffed bat-wing chair in a tatty plaid covering so hard on the eyes it was dubbed “Old Ugly” were arranged around a scarred coffee table in front of the desk; a sort of Fortune 500 office gone bad. The wide-planked floor beneath everything was worn smooth from a million footsteps. In the corner of the office a small washroom held a bunch of shirts and sweatshirts on wooden pegs.

  Jane could hear a faint lawnmower whine as Dylan moved on to a different patch of grass. She advanced quickly to Sam’s old desk and began to peruse a giant road map of Brockton-area roads tacked to the wall behind it, between the two windows. Her eyes followed a finger as she slid it along the paper map.

  “Kilsythe...Kilsythe...Kilsythe! Ha! I thought that sounded familiar.” She found that Kilsythe Terrace was off of Brendan, only a stone’s throw from the Canaday family mansion, and another stone’s throw from his sister Susan’s house. She wondered why she hadn’t caught up to Brian. Why he had been nowhere in sight when she was in the area of his old home, his sister’s home and his new residence. There certainly had been a lot of cars parked around Susan’s home, she recalled, but not the Mercedes SUV.

  “Planning another road trip?” Sam banged through the glass-paned door, working in his usual high-speed, boots clomping loudly on the floor planks. Jane gasped and nearly parted from her skin.

  “Boy, are you jumpy today!” He looked at her sideways as he placed grain invoices on top of the file cabinets and then moved to the plank shelf and the Mr. Coffee, now finished with its perking. “You might want to try backing off the caffeine just a bit.” He indicated the amount to her with his thumb and index finger.

  Jane plopped into his office chair making the aged swivel mechanism scream. “All that nasty city traffic and the construction mess,” she lied.

  Sam looked at her sharply again as he selected from his mug collection lined up on the plank shelf like miss-matched soldiers. Ceramic Harley Davidson mugs were next to Heineken glass mugs, Coors
mugs, Patriots mugs, a Budweiser holiday-issue beer stein—anything that would hold at least 16 ounces of coffee and was not of the plastic family was accepted into the collection.

  Jane sighed. She hated the kind of close scrutiny Sam was beaming on her. He didn’t look like her great Aunt Edith, but he had the same uncanny ability to read faces like open books; although Sam wasn’t one to use the information against her as Edith had. She tried again. “My blood sugar’s down around my ankles. I haven’t had anything since breakfast.”

  Sam nodded as he poured himself coffee in a mug with the legend “Moose Drool”, and then grabbed a glass Cheers mug for her. “In that case, you can have coffee. Enough milk and sugar to gag on, right?”

  “Right, fully loaded. Don’t weaken my milk and sugar with too much coffee.”

  Sam sniffed at that, poured hers, then shoveled sugar and dumped a ton of half and half in it, stirring it roughly. He handed her the mug holding tan liquid. “No—sit, stay there,” he told her when she would’ve vacated his chair. “I’ve never seen you look so wiped out. So much for retail therapy—guess my father was right when he said shopping would kill a good man.”

  Jane laughed and sipped her coffee, trying to hide her face in the mug. Sam still looked suspicious. She took another peek at him when he turned away to sit in Old Ugly, the monstrous wing chair drowning in enough plaid to cause permanent eye-strain. Short stocky Sam; mother hen. He was the same way with the horses, and quite a jockey in his day until too many falls had required more mending than his forty-five year old bones could handle.

  Jane gulped down sweet, tepid coffee, realizing she was close to starving.